What's in a Web Address? Maybe a Lawsuit

Published: October 22, 1999

(Page 2 of 2)

Frustrated, Morgan officials rescinded their offer of $10,000 and filed suit on Aug. 13. In court documents, executives contend that the biking theme that now appears on the Web site did not appear there until 10 days after the suit was filed, ''in a transparent attempt to conceal its fraudulent ransom scheme.''

They now think they were dealing all along with Sau Wong, who says he is a computer-chip engineer who has worked in Silicon Valley for 25 years, not either of his sons. But Mr. Wong and Ivan tried to dispel that notion in an interview, saying the idea of registering domain names had been Ivan's from the start.

Ivan said he had read an article that said the people who register domain names can sometimes profit from them. ''In school, we learned about freedom of speech,'' he said, adding that one of his teachers had told him that if you got a Web site first, ''you can sell it.''

Asked how a 17-year-old came up with the names of so many investment banks, like Goldman, Sachs, Ivan said his father gave him the ideas. ''I have a Goldman Sachs account,'' Mr. Wong said.

Both Ivan and his father insisted that they did not solicit buyers for any of the domain names.

''We are not beggars,'' Mr. Wong said. ''We do not need to beg.''

Cybersquatting has created a storm of legal controversy. Trademark holders are getting more support from the courts and from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as Icann, a nonprofit corporation that oversees the registration of domain names, legal experts said. So many disputes over the rights to domain names have landed in court that Icann is trying to set up a mandatory arbitration system to settle them.

There is also legislation before Congress intended to strengthen the rights of trademark holders to claim Internet addresses and to seek damages against squatters.

In one recent case, a Canadian boy, 16, incurred the wrath of Apple Computer Inc. when he registered the domain name www.appleimac.com after Apple introduced its iMac personal computer. He said he would use it to draw traffic to his Web-based business but would consider selling it. But after hearing from Apple's lawyers, he renounced ownership of the name.

Still, some judges don't see speculating in domain names as so harmful, said Pam Samuelson, a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley. ''One could say that cybersquatting is just another example of American ingenuity,'' she said. ''These people are going out and creating things that somebody else might find of value. In a sense, they're entrepreneurs.''

Ms. Samuelson said that ''This doesn't seem to be an open-and-shut case'' of trademark infringement. The trademark in question, MSDW, is relatively new -- Morgan Stanley merged with Dean Witter in 1997 -- and not that famous, she said. A Federal statute enacted in 1995 was expressly aimed at stopping cyber squatters from diluting the value of established trademarks.

Photo: Ivan Wong, 17, the owner of a sought-after Internet address. (Peter DaSilva for The New York Times)